Holidays & Mysteries Reveal Family Dysfunction

It's the holiday season, and families gather to celebrate, tolerate or denigrate as the case may be. If your family has its share of dysfunction, it may be time to gain perspective via mysteries with dysfunctional families at their core. For example, check out A Banquet of Consequences, this year's new Inspector Lynley mystery by Edgar Award-winning Elizabeth George. At the center of a family's deadly web sits mother Caroline Goldacre, a pathological liar who has damaged her sons, driven one husband away, made her incumbent partner miserable, and is now blamed for a troubled son's suicide by his girlfriend, whom mom blames in turn. When someone is poisoned, is monster Caroline also a murderer or, as she claims, the intended victim? Either scenario makes sense with this mom from hell! For a lighter take, read The Spellman Files, the first novel of Lisa Lutz's humorous mystery series featuring Isabel "Izzy" Spellman. Izzy works for her dysfunctional, though snoopily competent, family in their private investigation firm. The Spellmans are so addicted to detecting that they spend their off hours investigating each other--tailing, wiretapping and backmailing family. When Izzy's parents hire her 14-year-old sister to trail her and find out about her love life, Izzy decides it's time to quit. But she has to finish one last job, a missing person cold case that turns into the most important case of her life. For a classic psychological thriller, turn to the 1986 Edgar Award winning A Dark Adapted Eye by Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine. Narrator Faith Severn recalls a 30-year-old tragedy involving her dominating, possessive aunt, Vera Hillyard, who initially seeks to control her beautiful younger sister Eden to the neglect of son Frances, and then abandons focus on Eden to dote on younger son James, who may or may not be illegitimate. When Eden marries but cannot have children, she demands custody of James, claiming he is mistreated by Vera. The two sisters become embroiled in a custody battle that ends in violence and disturbing revelations. Or maybe you just want to escape with a comforting, seasonal "cozy" mystery instead: http://cozy-mysteries-unlimited.com/thanksgiving-list

Tidying Up: Cures for Disorderly Living

Our culture of material accumulation has its unexpected ills. Homes can be overwhelmed by disorganized, useless clutter. Does a disorderly living space reflect a disorderly life, one lacking in serenity, beauty and joy? The answers is apparently yes for many people based on two books topping The New York Times best seller lists: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo and Lovable Livable Home: How to Add Beauty, Get Organized, and Make Your House Work for You by Sherry and John Petersik. Kondo's KonMari method discards the traditional room-by-room clean-up approach in favor of categorizing objects and providing guidelines on judging the purpose of each, whether something "sparks joy" or not, moves you forward or holds you in the past. Reviews are rhapsodic: "Reading it, you glimpse a glittering mental freedom from the unread/uncrafted/unworn, buyer's remorse, the nervous eyeing of real estate listings," declares The Atlantic, while The London Times salutes Kondo's "recognition of something quietly profound: that mess is often about unhappiness, and that the right kind of tidying can be a kind of psychotherapy for the home as well as for the people in it." Be warned that the book has a Japanese anthropomorphic soul that attributes feelings to things like socks, but that's part of its charm--and maybe its effectiveness. The Petersiks' book is down-to-earth American. A follow-up to their Young House Love success for young couples, the new book introduces kids and pets into their maturing home life. Divided simply by space function--living, eating, sleeping, washing, entry, working and playing--Lovable Livable Home uses lots of color pictures to show how to organize and use DIY projects to avoid toy-strewn mess without sacrificing style and comfort. So if you want to start organizing before the holiday chaos, or to prep for a New Year's resolution to tidy up, check out these guides. http://www.amazon.com/The-Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering/dp/1607747308/

Inspiring Histories of Collective Vision

I am currently cruising through the Panama Canal. To prepare for the journey, I waded through David McCullough's National Book Award-winning tome The Path Between the Seas about the creation of the Panama Canal between 1870 and 1914. It is a story of delusion and determination, political treachery and cooperation, engineering feats and medical breakthroughs, tragedy and triumph, and the collective effort of historic figures like President Theodore Roosevelt as well as many thousands of unknown toilers. I finished McCullough's book amid the testy GOP and Democrat debates, as popular rejection of the political establishment propelled unlikely outsiders to the top of polls amid looming challenges to energy, environment, infrastructure and health technology. I found myself naturally longing to visit times when American politics was capable of the grand and visionary progress of McCullough's history (minus the gunboat diplomacy). I turned to my copy of Tom Wolfe's space-program tale The Right Stuff about another national effort that pushed the envelope of technology and individual heroism. I searched out the Hoover Dam saga told in Colossus by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hitzik, and the well-reviewed Empire Express, David Bain's sprawling history of the building of the transcontinental railroad. And I was reassured. All histories reminded me that America's great national projects have been born amid, and survived in spite of, political conflict and even outright skulduggery. If history is a guide, our thirst for common purpose toward uncommon achievement will survive spates of political aridity. For inspiration from McCullough's Panama Canal tale, see http://www.amazon.com/The-Path-Between-Seas-1870-1914/dp/0671244094

Books for Young Sleuths, From Toddler to Teen

Mystery fiction is not just an adult pleasure. Holiday book gifts can deliver the joys of detection and puzzle-solving to young people from teen down to toddler. Yes, there's even something for 3- to 5-year-old sleuths this year--appropriately titled Who Done It? by Olivier Tallec. On each page of the picture book, young readers are asked to choose a culprit from a lineup of human and animal characters in response to questions such as "Who ate all the jam?" Spotting the guilty party is not always clear-cut; maybe it's the fox with jam on his face or maybe the rabbit with the upset tummy. Children are exposed to concepts that even trip up adults, such as judging expressions and postures, and avoiding quick assumptions. Of course, some answers are easy and designed to get a giggle from small readers, such as "Who couldn't hold it?" Moving on to readers aged 10 to 12, check out Greenglass House by Kate Milford, a 2015 Edgar Award winner for Best Juvenile Mystery. Twelve-year-old Milo, adopted son of innkeepers of a spooky smuggler's inn called Greenglass House, is spending his winter holidays there when an odd assortment of visitors arrive in the middle of a blizzard. Soon objects have gone missing and secrets abound, and Milo joins the cook's daughter Meddy to follow the clues. For teens, The Art of Secrets by James Klise, 2015 Edgar Award winner for Best Young Adult Novel, provides a more complex and thought-provoking view of the modern world and human character. Muslim immigrant Saba Khan's family apartment burns down, perhaps due to a hate crime, but her high school and community rally to aid with fundraising. Soon she is living in a rent-free luxury apartment, enjoying Facebook fame and even being secretly romanced by a popular boy. The good feelings turn ugly, however, when a piece of "found" art donated to a school fundraiser turns out to be worth a half million dollars, and is later stolen from the school. A web of greed, jealousy, shocking accusations, hidden motives, lies and secrets enmeshes the characters. Check out the other nominees in the Juvenile and YA categories of the 2015 Edgar Awards: http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html